I just finished the Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky and it was great. Definitely slow and unmistakably the ramblings of a madman at times, but it was a great one. The ending is beautiful. I don't know how else I can describe it.

Unfortunately I cannot confess to having read a great deal of Dostoevsky; I'm not one for sticking with a book if I'm having a hard time of reading it, and I have a harder time reading Dostoevsky than of any other prominent writer. I just get the feeling that he's messing with his readership.
But off the back of your recommendation I’ll give the Brothers Karamazov a go; I’ve heard that it’s his greatest composition.

It's definitely difficult for a while, as in, not a lot of plot movement for at least half of the thousand page book. The only reason I really got through it was because I had a goal to finish it and because a good friend of mine loved it. Having it on audiobook may have been a drawback as it was all but impossible to keep up on all the names.

I grew up in Russia so I read a lot of Russian classics, mostly at school, which, of course, didn't help with loving them The novels that stood out for me were War and Peace (by the way the more accurate translation is War and People) and The Hero of Out Times by Lermontov. It's probably not known outside of Russia, but it contain one of the best example of Russian prose and it almost reads like an adventure novel at times. From the 20th century, my absolute favorite is The Master and Margaret by Bulgakov. It has a lot of humor and fantastical elements, and can be categorized as "magical realism", I suppose. Of course, it has a lot of satire so you have to have at least some idea of the history and culture of Russia in the 1930s to enjoy it fully.

Finally, there's a huge body of great poetry, but I don't think it's fully translatable into other languages.

My best friend in high school gave me a copy of Crime and Punishment as a gift, and I quickly became fascinated by Raskolnikov and his idea that he was, as an intellectually superior person, above morality. It's been literally decades since I read it.....I believe I was only 17! But I do recall that I couldn't put the book down. The multiple names for many characters was, at first confusing, but that didn't get in the way of the story of a brutal murderer so driven by paranoia and then.......but no, I won't give away any more.

After that, I read Anna Karenina and loved it, but somehow became bogged down in War and Peace. I returned to another of Dostoevsky's - The Brothers Karamazov - and I was captivated once more.

It is the spirituality of Dostoevsky's work that drew me in. At the time, I had long considered entering a convent upon graduation, and so many of my favorite books dealt with the spiritual side of humanity.

Even the sci-fi I was reading contained strong elements of that - works by Bradbury, Asimov, and Heinlein.

I remember a history professor of mine.....he taught pre-Communist Russian History, and I recall how he stressed the deeply spiritual nature of the Russian people. He used to say there was tremendous significance in the reference to their country as "Mother Russia." The literature I was familiar with certainly reflected this.

Crime and Punishment I found a bit difficult to get through, as it was sort of painful to stick with the main charcter as he suffered such mental anguish, but I did read it through to the end and ultimately enjoy it.

Leo Tolstoy 'Anna Karenina' ~ absolutely fantastic, I really identified with the central characters, the insights into their feelings and dilemmas was spot on.

Of the three Dostoyevskys I've read ('Crime and Punishment', 'The Idiot' and 'The Brothers Karamazov'), my favourite will always be 'Crime and Punishment' - for the legal mind this is a true classic . 'The Idiot' I struggled through, and whilst I enjoyed parts of it, other parts dragged, and I think it'll be a few years before I pick it up again. 'The Brothers Karamazov' comes a pretty close second to 'Crime and Punishment' - I enjoyed this very much.

And finally 'Doctor Zhivago' by Boris Pasternak. Like, presumably, most people I saw the classic film with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie before I read the book. I think this may have been an advantage (for once!) as it gave me the incentive to keep reading through the slower parts of the book. However, as much as I love the film (and as much as I ignore the more modern TV adaptation), the book is the best, and well worth reading.

Glad to see Dr Zhivago mentioned: I've also seen the movie before reading the book, and i fell in love with Julie Christie - it was hard not to see her face when reading the novel. Wasn't impressed by Omar Shariff here though.

regarding Dostoyesvski, for me the order is The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, White Nights [made into a great film by Luchino Visconti], The Gambler.

Anna Karenina was just OK, War and Peace great, and on my TBR now is some Turgheniev

I had issues the other way around, but perhaps it was the translation. I didn't make it through Anna Karenina, whilst I loved The Idiot. I can't recall the translators for the version of Anna Karenina I had, but Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky did the translation of my copy of The Idiot.

I've been urged to read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, though I haven't gotten around to it yet.

As you can tell from my username I'm a huge fan of Russian lit in general, and of Dostoevsky in particular. I love all the old Russian writers; Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov, Pushkin; as well as the Soviet writers; Gorky, Sholokhov, Pasternak, Bulgakov, Solzenitzen. In my opinion The Idiot is the single greatest novel ever written.

Strangely I had an urge to reread some of these Russian novels. It is getting close to 10 years since I read some of them. I was wondering if they would still have the same effect on me.

Recently I bought the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace, thinking that I my as well add something fresh to my reading of it. I also have their translation of Anna Karenina, but when I tried to read that I hated it. I gave up around the ice skating bit, which lacked any sort of magic, so I didn't really get that far into it. Does anyone have any opinions on translations? All the Tolstoy I have read has been translated by Rosemary Edmonds, which I have heard is largely based on the Aylmer & Maud translations. They may seem a little old fashioned to some, but I liked them.

Talking of Anna Karenina, a while ago I was listening to the radio, and I heard a piece about a new line of classic literature that was designed to be accessible to new readers. Their plan for Anna Karenina was to completely remove ALL of the Levin story. They also had a go at Moby Dick, removing all of Melville's philosophical musings. I can't remember who the publishers were. But I were to suggest a name for them it would be "lobotomy literature".

I first read The Brothers Karamazov when I was 17, possibly the best age to read a book like that.

From what I can remember I read them in this order

The Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment
The Idiot
War and Peace
Anna Karenina
Resurrection
Dead Souls
Notes from Underground (didn't finish)
House of the Dead (didn't finish)
The Devils (didn't finish)

I have been meaning to read Turgenev and George Elliot (the english Tolstoy ^^, or so I have heard)

In the last few years I have been reading Chekhov's short stories. I regard these to be among the best things I have read. Doing what "Russian literature" does best, that very vivid, human, real life as we all experience it. I've been reading the Oxford World Classics tranlsations by Ronald Hingely.

Someone said we are all Dostoevsky characters. We just need a Dostoevsky to come and write us.

Strangely I had an urge to reread some of these Russian novels. It is getting close to 10 years since I read some of them. I was wondering if they would still have the same effect on me.

Recently I bought the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace, thinking that I my as well add something fresh to my reading of it. I also have their translation of Anna Karenina, but when I tried to read that I hated it. I gave up around the ice skating bit, which lacked any sort of magic, so I didn't really get that far into it. Does anyone have any opinions on translations? All the Tolstoy I have read has been translated by Rosemary Edmonds, which I have heard is largely based on the Aylmer & Maud translations. They may seem a little old fashioned to some, but I liked them.

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The Pevear/Volokhonsky translations are generally considered the best.

OK, I might try and give it another shot. I found their English to be "bald and awkward" (Edmund Wilson's word's to describe Nabokov's translation of Pushkin). It might be technically closer to Tolstoy though. I'm not sure if I will last the full ~1000 pages of War and Peace but it could be interesting.

Interesting comments, even Richard Pevear chips in. It give me some insight to why I felt the way I did about their translation.

Let's put it this way - I'm glad it wasn't their translation I read in the first, because I would have missed out on some of my favourite books.

What they have done to Denisov looks completely incomprehensible.

“If I were a ghrobber, I’d ask for meghrcy, but I’m on tghrial because I bghrought the ghrobbers to light.”

and I quote Dmitry Buzadzhi

"As readers, we will encounter most foreign-language literary masterpieces in translation, which creates an enormous responsibility for the translator. Possibly the most important task a literary translator faces is that of enabling a foreign audience to hear the unique voice of the original author as if the author had written in the translated language. If the English-speaking audience were unfortunate enough to know Russian writers through Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translations alone, the voices of Gogol (”How – what? An arm, Osip Nikiforovich!”), Dostoyevsky (”Yes, good-looking. Even very”), Bulgakov (”You’ve, what, been to the doctor?”) and Tolstoy would sound like a raucous choir of people with speech problems – a sound which is far from being “transparent”."

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Why, then, has this pair received so many positive reviews? One explanation is that most reviewers of their books have not actually compared the originals with Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translations. Another is that Russia is still an unfamiliar country for the average American reader; maybe they did, after all, have peasants in the 19th century who casually said “Well, I declare” (see Pevear and Volokhonsky’s “Brothers Karamazov”). It is also undeniable that people fall for new and reportedly innovative things. When new translations are unanimously proclaimed “absolutely faithful”, “true to the verbal inventiveness of Dostoyevsky” and simply “a permanent standard” (excerpts from blurbs), when they are produced in an unusual and vaguely romantic way, when they claim to break away from the dull past and give the modern (presumably more intelligent and sophisticated) reader the real thing, and, finally, when they are endorsed by a definitive expert on translation like Oprah Winfrey, they are bound to become bestsellers."

It seems to me that Pevear Volkonsky are riding on the back of established translations that have caused English readers to embrace these foreign novels as masterpieces. That absolutely would not have happened if their crude translations had preceded them.

I don't know how I missed this thread, because I became interested in some of these books about four months ago. I ended up buying several of them (always the Pevear/Volonsky translations, based on what I read on the internet).

I read Crime and Punishment in June, and I was blown away. I thought it was one of the best books I've ever read.

I look forward to reading The Brothers Karamazov and War & Peace soon.

Oh well, they will last until the next Emperor's New Clothes translation gets endorsed by Oprah's book club...

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I personally found the translation wondferful. Also, when I compared a few pages side by side with some of the older translations, I found the new one seemed much fresher and more engaging.

When I was looking online to see what translation I should buy, I quickly learned that many people seem to consider the Pevear/Volonsky translations to be the current best. I haven't heard your particular criticism before.